Wednesday, April 28, 2010

I rearranged my schedule at work today, got a hair cut/color and got travel ready! My name was misspelled on my birth certificate(just one little letter). Before 9-11 it was no big deal, but afterwards, it became a major deal! Because of that one little letter, I got tossed in LAX

terror tank a few years back. Rick thought it was really funny, but I can tell you, in a split second, you can lose all rights and suddenly there are visions of bread and water, and no sunshine for many years. So, I finally had the birth certificate corrected, driver's license, social security card and pass port all fixed!!!!!! I can now travel and hopefully not get tossed in some holding tank, while an armed guard yells obscenities at me.

Now, I have to convince Rick to travel. So where do I want to go?????? for starters, back to Ireland, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Grand Canyon, NYC, Boston, then I want to go to some places I have never been, like Nova Scotia, Paris, Prague(for Christmas), Africa, Greece, the list

goes on and on! Now, I have to figure out how to pay for all this travel. But trust me, where there is a will, I can find the way!

I love to travel, I remember my first trip to NYC, everyone kept telling me how rude people

were, not to ask directions, don't ask for change, etc! Well, I did everything everyone told me not to do........I asked a vendor at a news stand for change, he smiled and told me that if I stood there and talked to him all day(its the southern accent) he'd give me his news stand, next I walked into the Chase Manhattan Bank and asked them to cash a check on my local Alabama

bank. The clerk made a call and the next thing I knew, I was on the top floor in the president's office having coffee, while he told me how much he loved Alabama football!

We were in Boston and didn't have change for the train, an older gentleman missed his train so I would not be alone while Rick went looking for change. In Ireland, these stories went on forever,

we were lost on our first day there, 3:00pm,. no lunch and jet lagged. We stopped at a gas station and asked directions, asked where we could get food, and the woman who owned the station went to her kitchen and made us sandwiches! I think travel, is just like life, if you expect the worst, that is what you get, but if you look for the good, treat folks with kindness, and not walk around like some arrogant tourist, you get the good stuff! Dr. Wayne Dyer says it best,

"you get what you think about whether you want it or not". Just like life, sometimes when you travel you get thrown a curve, but a smile, a deep breath and sometimes a tear and you are moving on down the road!

1 comment:

I give high marks to Prague. One of the funkiest and most exciting places I've ever been. There are about as many Americans as Czechs living in the main part of the city these days, and there's even an English language newspaper. The city is an artist's paradise: impossible to go more than a block or two without encountering an art exhibit, street musicians, poetry readings, plays. Saw the opera house where "Amadeus" was filmed. We were there for more than a week, but I still didn't get to see one percent of the events I wanted to. You gotta go, sometime.